StanChart to step up mkt advisory services in India

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: Standard Chartered, the UK bank that earns almost all its profit in emerging markets, will step up advising clients on share sales in India next year, South Asia chief executive officer Neeraj Swaroop said.

“The big piece missing in the wholesale side was equity capital market-related activity, which we are bringing in,” Swaroop said in Mumbai. “We will, in 2010, be in the equity space because that’s one capability that we were not offering our wholesale clients.”

The additional service in India, its second-largest contributor to profit after Hong Kong, will help the London-based lender tap a market where share sales climbed to at least a five- year high in the third quarter. More than 30 firms are awaiting approval from the regulator for new share sales after companies raised $3.11 billion this year.

Standard Chartered Bank’s wholesale banking operations in India, which include cash transaction banking, treasury, corporate finance and custody services for companies, is the parent company’s single-largest business.

The company is getting into the shares-advisory business after it acquired a 49% stake in Mumbai-based brokerage UTI Securities Ltd, which also offers investment banking and wealth management services, in January 2008, and in Hong Kong- based institutional broker Cazenove Asia Ltd in January.

The bank ranked 22nd in advising companies on share sales in India this year after it managed one transaction, a Rs 265 crore rights offer for Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd, in September, according to Bloomberg data.